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Author: Aeonn

We’ve been hobbling along with a Mac Mini as our PleX server for the past few years. I’m becoming quite a data hoarder and the poor Mini can’t keep up with my appetite so it was time to move to something a little more serious. I built JDM_WAAAT’s “Thread-Runner” config and hope to migrate my data this weekend.

As you can see, a lot of the major components were purchased used which I sourced primarily via eBay. There’s a lot of power (16 cores / 32 threads) and a bit of storage (9TB). It’s quite a build at a very reasonable cost. Assembly was easy. The Phentoo case is amazing. I really like the HDD cages (no screws required) and the cable management behind the motherboard. I encountered two minor hiccups and was able to resolve them quickly. The machine was booting to EFI and required disabling in BIOS to boot to USB and the NIC was not enabled, also resolved with a quick BIOS switch.

I’ll be running it headless and administering via Muximux and running PleX, SABnzbd+, Sonarr, and Radarr. I’m going to cheat and use AtoMic Toolkit to get it all done. The SSD will host the OS and metadata/thumbnails for speed and I’ll throw the data to the HDDs. The Western Digital HDDs are enterprise/data center certified and rated 1.2 million hours MTBF. Impressive!

After migrating data, I’ll be backing up using Duplicati to my unlimited Google Drive.

I’m really interested to see what else I do with this box. It should be all we need for several years (save for a few more HDDs)!

About a month ago, my wife totaled her car. She was driving a well-appointed Ford Fusion that we bought right before our son was born to replace her decaying Honda Accord. I had a love/hate relationship with the Ford. I loved its features and room, but I absolutely hated the way it drove. It was a very quick car, but I could never get used to its handling or very abrupt braking. Truth be told, after I learned she was ok, I was happy the car would be out of our lives. So, we went car shopping and were within days of purchasing a fully-loaded 2018 Subaru Outback. I really really liked the Outback after taking it for a test drive and put a deposit down on a new one coming in off the truck in the color my wife liked (that I didn’t like, but I’m sure you know how that goes.)

On a whim, one Saturday last month, while waiting for the Outback to come in, we decided to stop into Mazda and take a look at the CX-5 and CX-9. Let’s hop off on a tangent here, really quickly. I love Mazdas. I have owned several. My first car was a ’96 Protege. I then owned a ’03 Protege, a ’07 Mazda3 hatchback, and my current car is a 2010 CX-7. I told my wife, after the accident, “We can finally get that new CX-5!” I had been trying to convince her for over a year to dump the Ford and get a CX-5. Ok, back to the dealership. The CX-9 is a really nice car. It’s huge and has three rows, but to get it loaded with all of the features I wanted would have pushed upwards of $45k.

Enter the CX-5. We test drove the CX-5 and my wife immediately fell in love. I knew the Subaru was off the table the second she sat in the seat. Her face lit up and we both remarked how the car drives exactly my CX-7. So, we drove a 2017.5 pin-striped Snowflake White Pearl Mica AWD Grand Touring CX-5 with Premium Package off the lot. Navigation, blind-spot monitoring, adaptive cruise control, rear heated seats(!), heads up display, Bose audio. Oh man. This car is sexy.

Oh Mazda, I can’t believe I was ever going to cheat on you with a Subaru. What am I? Some kind of Subaru-driving lesbian? Pssshhhh. (No offense to Subaru drivers, lesbians, or Subaru-driving lesbians).

I recently got a Nintendo Switch and have been spending hours and hours playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I am sucked into this open world and count the minutes until I am free to play again. I have played the majority of the Zelda series, including the Legend of Zelda, Zelda II, A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time (swoon), Majora’s Mask (swoon), Wind Waker (swoon), Four Swords, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword.

There’s something magical about Breath of the Wild, though. It’s the open world, ability to do just about anything you dream of, the slated DLCs, massive map, complex dungeons, weapons system, numerous side quests, cooking system, clothing upgradability, and the numerous shrines. I paraglided and mounted a wild horse without touching the ground! I love this game. I love the format of the Switch. Zelda is back!

My birthday is in a few weeks and my wife got me a Denon DP-300F turntable. I hooked it up in my bookcase, wired it to a new Insignia NS-STR514 Bluetooth 2-way receiver (which also supports FM radio), drilled some holes and ran some new Polk T15 bookshelf speakers. This setup is quite the upgrade from the basic wireless speaker we have been using. We were also playing music through the TV, but the sound bar doesn’t sound too great. I also intend to Bluetooth our Echo Dot to the receiver for Spotify playback.

I’ve bought a few records and intend to grow my collection. I’ve set up a wishlist on Discogs and hope to score some good deals on some wanted records. I’ve set up a subdomain with my collection and you can view it at vinyl.aeonn.net. I’ve also added a link to it in my sidebar. I really want to secure the John Mayer 180g records. I have Battle Studies thus far, but have to save up for the others. I intend to spend a lot of my “hobby money” on records, but some of them are so darn expensive. Continuum will likely be my next purchase.

We’re only going to Magic Kingdom and EPCOT as we don’t think Paul, 19 months, will be able to tolerate a longer trip right now. We booked the trip last minute, so didn’t get any reservations for Be Our Guest. We really like the lunch there. We did get a reservation for Via Napoli for dinner at EPCOT and got FastPasses for rides. I am very excited to take the baby on rides like Peter Pan, Winnie the Pooh, and the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover!

We also got MagicBand 2.0s. I nearly completed my collection of the 1.0s, but never did get or want a pink one.

Travel:
My daughter and I went to Los Angeles and saw the sights. We visited Galcos (and got a slew of sodas), Disneyland, and Catalina Island where I let her illegally drive the golf cart. She wrecked it and I caught it on video!

My wife and I took our kids back to Port St Joe, FL. We rented a cabin ($100/nt!!) and spent a lot of time at the beach. We saw the Milky Way at night and caught both a sunrise and sunset. I bought binoculars, Nikon 8249s, and watched the ships out on the ocean. It was a fantastic trip and I look forward to booking the next and going back. I would love to buy a piece of property and potentially retire there. We tried to get into Indian Pass Raw Bar, but the place was packed so we ate at KrazyFish in downtown Port St Joe. It was great.

Tech, Software & Gaming:
My iMac crashed on Christmas Eve. Fortunately, I was able to completely restore all of my data with Arq. I have since configured it on all of my machines and my wife’s Mac. Data loss is not an option! My Amazon cloud drive is currently holding 1.2TB from all machines.

I am still playing The Long Dark. At 2015’s end, I had 253 hours logged. I am shocked to say that I ended the year with over 750 hours played. That’s approximately 1.36hrs played per day. I do not play it every day, and sometimes go weeks without playing. When I do play, it seems to be an all-day binge! As of now, I have 796 hrs on record.

Pizza is my holy grail. It is hard to make good pizza. I’ve had some major flops, but am getting better with practice. I made FWSY‘s Saturday white over the weekend and set some dough back. Ready for some pizza porn?